‘The absurdity of his tenets, can only be equalled by the effrontery with which they are maintained. Among the most ridiculous of what he calls first principles is that of the equality of mankind. He is one of your levellers! Marry! His superior! Who is he? On what proud eminence can he be found? On some Welsh mountain, or the peak of Teneriffe? Certainly not in any of the nether regions! Dispute his prerogative who dare! He derives from Adam; what time the world was all “hail fellow well met!” The savage, the wild man of the woods, is his true liberty-boy; and the ourang-outang, his first cousin. A lord is a merry andrew, a duke a jack-pudding, and a king a tom-fool: his name is man! ‘Then, as to property, ’tis a tragic farce; ’tis his sovereign pleasure to eat nectarines, grow them who will. Another Alexander he; the world is all his own! Aye, and he will govern it as he best knows how. He will legislate, dictate, dogmatise, for who so infallible? Cannot Goliah crack a walnut? ‘As for arguments, it is but ask and have: a peck at a bidding, and a good double handful over. I own I thought I knew something; but no, I must to my horn-book. Then, for a simile, it is sacrilege; and must be kicked out of the high court of logic! Sarcasm too is an ignoramus, and cannot solve a problem; wit a pert puppy, who can only flash and bounce. The heavy walls of wisdom are not to be battered down with such popguns and pellets. He will waste you wind enough to set up twenty millers, in proving an apple is not an egg-shell; and that _homo_ is Greek for a goose. Duns Scotus was a school-boy to him. I confess he has more than once dumb-founded me with his subtleties. But, pshaw! it is a mortal waste of words and time to bestow them on him.’—Vol. II. With respect to Mr Holcroft’s principles as they are delivered in Anna St. Ives, I shall here attempt to give a short sketch of them, of the train of events in which they originated, and of the seductiveness of the prospects which they held out to a mind not perfectly callous to the interests of humanity. Even could it be shewn that they were disgraceful to his penetration, yet they were certainly honourable to his heart, and they were highly honourable to human nature. It is indeed a little singular, that those who have augured most highly of the powers of our nature, and have entertained the most sanguine hopes of the future virtue and happiness of man, should so often have been considered as the worst enemies of society. But it seems that our self-love is not so much flattered by the idea of the progress we might hereafter make, as offended by that of the little we have already made. Reformers imprudently compliment mankind on what they might become, at the expense of what they are.